How Do You Stall the Progress of Civilization?

[Shinali Sishi]

On the main topic: make all their tech disposable out of necessity, because there are precious few substances (e.g. gold) that are both useful for technology and will survive extended periods of submersion. On top of this, it has scarcity and the need to have fire to refine and work it, a bit tricky underwater (even with geothermal vents).
So logically they would prefer to use more commonly available but less resilient materials, making it harder to reverse engineer something even a few years down the road if the knowledge is lost.
And that ignores that we equate high technology with electronics in many ways, which are a bit bothersome underwater.

So you have depressurized air dome cities and you think you won't have trouble? Your tech won't last long on trips to other cities, and you will be constantly repairing and improving the domes and other survival tech to the detriment of other technology. Oh, and if the tiniest seal fails, you die. Functionally it's like living in space but with more jellyfish and pressure and less paint chips of death.

That and once they meet the others, they'll be like, "why is my Jellyfish Harpoon 3000 useless against these bat people?!"

[Torco]

What I mean is that the ability to mobilize energy and matter, by maybe the use of technology, is, if not by itself at least a big part of what we mean by, economic progress.

This is a good idea. Really.

Yet, I don't think it's the only possible one. Like, freedom of movement and ease of access to distant objects seem to be an independent dimension. Having maps and knowing how to use an astrolabe can be more important than steam, with this criterion. Unfortunately, knowledge of this sort is more difficult to measure, compared to energy.

Also, if control of energy is all-important, then we're entering a regress phase: it's becoming more expensive.

Freedom of movement and ease of access are pretty dependent on energy and matter: its a way in which you might want to move matter around <you> using energy to get there faster. mobilizing the same amount of matter with less energy <say, not getting lost at sea> is also a function of the central concept: I agree its not all-important, but its a pretty good indicator, I think.

[Matrix]

I thought I'd be having an argument with one person, and now it's with four people. As a novice at argument and Philosophy and such, I don't feel particularly comfortable with that, so I think I will just bow out and concede defeat.

[Melend]

What kind of 'progress'? Cultural, technological, scientific?

In a way, this planet seems something like a very, very large generation ship. There are all kinds of fictional examples of how a society might adapt to living in a generation ship - and how those adaptations might go wrong in various ways. Lack of social change can either be an attempted adaptation, or a degenerate state the civilization falls into, depending heavily on the beliefs of the particular writer.

Simple survival might account for it - if the available resources are sufficiently limited, there won't be a lot of room to experiment and change. Any significant deviation from custom might actually be lethal, or so disadvantageous that no one ever tries again.

[WechtleinUns]

There's always the route of having a moderately plentiful and good lifestyle available to the denizens of the planet. The living conditions might not need to be plush and super comfortable, but they could be tolerable enough to prevent innovation out of desperation.

Also, a culture that promotes respect for tradition and reverance for the old ways of doing things might work well.

[Ťarilis Kalpyren]

What kind of 'progress'? Cultural, technological, scientific?

The idea is to prevent technological progress, and that is kind of directly tied into scientific progress. Cultural "progress" is completely separate, and I don't really have any reason to stop that from happening, as it would not really matter how culturally 'advanced' the civilization is as long as technologically they are at least comparable. They can have 12,000 years of advancement in the arts, or redefine person-hood half a dozen times, for example. In fact, cultural change makes for a richer conworld in a way. However, if technological progress requires the culture to remain the same as well, so be it.

There's always the route of having a moderately plentiful and good lifestyle available to the denizens of the planet. The living conditions might not need to be plush and super comfortable, but they could be tolerable enough to prevent innovation out of desperation.

Also, a culture that promotes respect for tradition and reverance for the old ways of doing things might work well.

It would be hard to find a balance where life is just good enough to not need to make any technological advancements. Technological advancement can proceed through the arts as well, and entertainment itself might drive technology forwards. Not in weaponry or anything (unless that is a big part of sports or something), but materials science has seen its share of research for hockey sticks, just as an example, and that can translate to other technologies. Even if that was not the case, people might want to expand since life is so 'tolerable', and then you might want advancements in power generation, transportation, resource processing, et cetera all of a sudden and the balance of non-advancement is thrown out the window.

As for culturally, there would be a problem of getting civilization advanced enough to survive the transition and yet have a cultural predisposition to not advance in the first place like that if they were to remain at a similar level for hundreds, let alone thousands of years. Although I suppose a huge nostalgic movement might occur when they loose things like open air and sun, and then decide to hold onto the technological methods they had at that time... and then a kind of reverence for it forms, and at some point it is decided that it is blasphemous to try and make a better propeller or something... hmm...

On the main topic: make all their tech disposable out of necessity, because there are precious few substances (e.g. gold) that are both useful for technology and will survive extended periods of submersion. On top of this, it has scarcity and the need to have fire to refine and work it, a bit tricky underwater (even with geothermal vents).
So logically they would prefer to use more commonly available but less resilient materials, making it harder to reverse engineer something even a few years down the road if the knowledge is lost.
And that ignores that we equate high technology with electronics in many ways, which are a bit bothersome underwater.

So you have depressurized air dome cities and you think you won't have trouble? Your tech won't last long on trips to other cities, and you will be constantly repairing and improving the domes and other survival tech to the detriment of other technology. Oh, and if the tiniest seal fails, you die. Functionally it's like living in space but with more jellyfish and pressure and less paint chips of death.

Scarcity of resources would indeed be a limiting factor. Though I don't think our submarines are made of gold or other non-rusting materials now out of the sheer cost of stainless steel and the like, and actually rust quite a bit despite our continued use of them (though repair is near constantly necessary...). I don't know what you would be making a submarine out of that rusts through by the time you travel to another city and back... 12,000 years is a lot of rust though. Also, keeping electronics indoors helps with that pesky lack of water-resistance. But yes, mechanical devices would serve better in case of leaks I would think. And you can stick a mechanical device on the outside of a submarine.

A similar question might be how do you stop technological progress from occurring on a space station or migratory space fleet then? That might be a good way of viewing the situation to get a different prospective... Solar energy, asteroid mining, and edible space-born life.

That and once they meet the others, they'll be like, "why is my Jellyfish Harpoon 3000 useless against these bat people?!"

"Does your Jellyfish Harpoon 3000 not harpoon bats the way you want it too? Well have we got a product for you! The Jellyfish Harpoon 4000 now comes fully customizable with bat-harpoon storage attachment and dedicated loading assembly for all your bat harpooning needs."

Also, Torque's definition conceptually serves very well.

[Tropylium]

The general solution I'd go with: upon learning of their planet's fate, the Ancients assembled some very resilient life-support systems (though: there's no weather, just don't put them in a seismically active area or in the way of a glacier stream, and you've eliminated most external sources of wear), which continue to enable the civilization's livestyle. The actual knowledge on how they operate, though, has been lost in the cataclysmic downgrading of civilization that followed. Possibly infrastructure devices are even considered to be divine artifacts?

(Incidentally, this premise reminds me of the webcomic Stone Clouds.)